Manteca’s Great Wolf Lodge delays reservations again, COVID-19 keeps opening unknown
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas-time might be the earliest you’ll be able to stay and splash at one of the Central Valley’s most anticipated new business openings of 2020.
Great Wolf Lodge has pushed back its timetable for opening once again as the coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc on all of this year’s best laid plans. Now new reservations will not be accepted until Dec. 17.
The new Manteca water park resort, has already delayed its grand opening multiple times since its scheduled July 1 debut. The massive property just off Highway 120 has completed all construction, but is now sitting vacant while the state continues to grapple with its COVID-19 outbreak.
The six-story hotel, indoor water park and family entertainment center celebrated its ground breaking in early November 2018. In the nearly two years since work began on the large development, next to Costco on Daniels Street, it’s been a source of excited anticipation. The lodge’s parent company, Great Wolf Resorts, operates 18 indoor water park resorts across the country. The Manteca site will be only its second location in California and first in the northern half of the state.
But, alas, the 500-room hotel and its attached 95,000-square-foot indoor water park and 45,000-square-foot family entertainment center have not been able to open because of ongoing safety restrictions and a considerable slowdown in tourism caused by the pandemic.
Jason Lasecki, Great Wolf Resort’s director of corporate communications, said the company has yet to set a new grand opening date for the site. At the start of the year, the company set an Aug. 1 open date for its newest property, but then in March work was going so well on the site that the date was moved up a full month to July 1. Just about a week after Great Wolf representatives triumphantly hosted a hard-hat tour of the facilities, the COVID-19 outbreak began to upend daily life.
Since then the opening date was pushed back to Aug. 1 and then Sept. 1 and finally put on hold indefinitely as new reservations were first paused until Oct. 28 and now until Dec. 17. That means the earliest you can expect to frolic around in the center’s many waterslides and pools is this holiday season. But, the good news is the entirely indoor water park and its pools are heated year-round.
“There was too much uncertainty as to where a business like ours would fall in the state’s reopening plan for us to set a an opening date – but we did say we would take reservations from Oct. 28th onward with the hope we would have some clarity going into the fall,” Lasecki said in an email interview. “That uncertainty continues, and we are planning to communicate a more official opening date once we receive additional clarity from government officials, but we did shift the first day for new reservations to December 17.”
Hiring for the about 600 jobs needed to staff the resort, which was scheduled for late June and early July, has also been paused for the time being, Lasecki said. He said it will start again once “we have greater feel for when businesses like ours will be allowed to operate.”
As with its previous opening pushbacks, those with reservations already to the still-closed hotel will be allowed to reschedule or receive a refund. So as another season passes, we’ll have to wait until at least winter to be able to enjoy this new wolf den.
This story was originally published October 14, 2020 at 2:14 PM with the headline "Manteca’s Great Wolf Lodge delays reservations again, COVID-19 keeps opening unknown."
